Blimpo: The Third Circle of Heck (23 page)

This is it
, Marlo fumed. She had absolutely, positively
had
it. She wasn’t sure who she hated more: Madame Pompadour, the devil and his nonsensical demands, or herself for thinking that she actually had a fair chance to succeed at something down here. One thing she did know, though, was that—somehow—she had been set up.

“Okay, Madame Pompous,” Marlo spat. “We’ve played it your way, and your way
blows
. Now we’re going to play a rousing game of Marlopoly, and I’ve got all the hotels, got it? I know
all about
what you’re up to with VaniTV.”

The downy fur on Madame Pompadour’s long, elegant neck rippled. Marlo could see shiny scales beneath.

“I
knew
you were snooping on me, you ill-bred piece of fresh Surface trash!”

Madame regained her composure.

“Besides, soon
everyone
will know about VaniTV. That’s rather the point of starting a new network: exposure.”

Marlo crossed her arms. “But I know
why
you’re
doing it … kind of … to make kids insecure so that they use something called a DREADmill—”

Madame Pompadour grabbed Marlo’s arm and tugged her toward her office.

“You know nothing!” Madame Pompadour whispered, her eyes fixed on Farzana. “And even if you
did
, you wouldn’t know what to do with it!”

“I wouldn’t know what to do with what I
don’t
know?” Marlo replied. “Have you been smoking catnip?”

Madame Pompadour hissed.

“Don’t you get all up on my grill, girl!”

Marlo laughed. “I love it when old people try to sling slang. It’s cute. Like when they try to make calls with their remote. Anyway, I’m done talking to you, ma’am. I answer to a lower power. And he’s about to get an earful—or
hornful
, more like.”

“You wouldn’t—”

Marlo yanked her arm away from Madame Pompadour’s clutches and stormed toward Satan’s office. The long hallway grew darker, smokier, and lower with every step, as if she was descending a steep slope. The hot tickle of brimstone curled Marlo’s nose. A noxious smog, like pepper-spray vapor, stung her eyes. The air grew so thick that Marlo practically had to chew it to breathe. Finally, the hallway ended at the devil’s door.

The stone door was engraved with what had
seemed from far away to be a grotesque gallery of hideous cadavers frozen in anguished death screams but, up close, was something far worse: a group of laughing dentists.

Madame Pompadour padded down the hallway behind her, as silent as fog creeping in on little cat feet.

“Don’t you
dare,”
she seethed.

Marlo gulped and grabbed the door handle: the bronzed hand of a businessman caught in mid “shake.” She pressed her palm to the burnished metal and screamed. It felt molten hot. Marlo jerked her hand back and examined it, expecting it to be nothing but a charred stump. But it was completely intact, not even flushed or especially warm. She drew in a thick, syrupy breath of humid air, squeezed her eyes shut, and grabbed the door handle again. Marlo, biting her lips so hard they bled, screamed a muffled scream as she yanked open the door.

And there, awaiting her in the sweltering brick office, behind a desk carved from old-growth rain forest wood capped with a sealskin desk blotter and ivory inlays, in an imperious chair upholstered with unicorn hide was …
absolutely no one
.

Marlo scanned the repugnant office. Large scorched planks sat at the bottom of a volcanic rock fireplace the size of a small garage. Marlo noticed that one of the planks had written on it
PROPERTY OF NOAH
.

Farzana skittered into the room behind Marlo.

“You’re going to ruin
everything
for me!”

Farzana’s entrance caused a swirl of dust to rise off a small pentagram-shaped coffee table set before the fireplace. It was apparent to Marlo that no one had been in this office for weeks, months … perhaps even years. Marlo whipped around.

“What do you mean?” she asked, the adrenaline still coursing through her body.

“You were my way out,” Farzana said as she wiped away her milk mustache. “My replacement. I hate it here. I had my transfer to Dupli-City all planned, pulling every string imaginable. I was going to be Mata Hari’s teacher’s aide!”

“So
that’s
why you kept covering for me,” Marlo replied, her jaw set, her eyes fiery enough to ignite the holy kindling in the long-abandoned fireplace. “Not to be nice, not to help a fellow Infern, but as some sort of …
inhuman sacrifice.”

Madame Pompadour strutted into the room, her sleek head sprouting from behind Farzana’s quivering shoulders. Her ears were flattened with rage while her eyes were as simultaneously cold and hot as dry ice.

“Miss Fauster,” she practically yowled before delivering the worst phrase that one could ever utter: four innocent words that, when arranged just so, have christened countless emotional shipwrecks.

“We need to talk.”

22 • A CASE OF DO OR D
i
ET

MILTON AND VIRGIL
rolled their barrels to a stop at the mouth of the dark, deserted hallway behind the Lose-Your-Lunchroom. They studied the silent tin shed parked at the hallway’s abrupt dead end behind Chef Boyareyookrazee’s kitchen.

“Seems quiet enough—
”
Virgil whispered.

“Shhh,” Milton interrupted. “I hear something.”

Milton motioned for Virgil to approach one side of the shed, while he took the other.

They kicked off their shoes and stealthily trod toward Hambone Hank’s Heart Attack Shack. A faint yet lusty snore rumbled from the shed, broken up by the occasional incoherent mumble.

“Anput … Kebauet … I will … save …
”
the deep voice grunted.

Milton slunk down as much as he could in his disguise and slowly peered inside the wide front window of the red and yellow shed. In the corner, curled up on a round foam bed, was Hambone Hank, catching some serious Zs. His long arms and legs, wrapped beneath his black robe, were twitching as if he was having a bad dream. Near him was a black cast-iron cauldron, sealed off with a lid that had welded to it a stubby coiled pipe. The pipe was roughly the size of the soul jars piled at the cauldron’s base.

That must be how he mixes in the lost souls without them running amok
, Milton surmised, having experienced firsthand the unpredictable buoyancy of souls, at least the good ones, when freed. Next to the cauldron was a deep fryer, another pile of jars, and a door—which, to Milton’s relief, had been left slightly open. Virgil crept alongside the shed with an armload of imaginary-friend souls.

“Switch the jars,” Milton whispered as he crouched down next to Virgil by the door. “Hand me the
real
soul jars through the window, and we’ll stow them in our gym lockers until we figure out what to do with them all.”

Virgil nodded and, with some difficulty, squeezed through the door and into the cramped shack. He tiptoed past the deep fryer—though, Milton noticed, not without first taking in a whiff of its contents—then knelt by the cauldron.

Hambone Hank stirred.
“Hush … puppies … don’t … whimper,”
the cook mumbled before returning to the land of Nod.

Virgil froze. The hair on his forearms stood on end. After half a minute, he moved—not completely thawed out but enough to resume “the ol’ switcheroo.” He handed Milton the Lost Soul jars filled with squirming, seething black globs that knocked angrily against the glass.

These were
definitely
some bad, bad folks
, Milton pondered.
No wonder we all stayed so heavy even after all those DREADmill sessions
.

Virgil stopped briefly to examine one of the souls of Make-Believe Play-fellows. He touched the clouded glass. His eyes became dreamy, and a faint smile crossed his lips.

Milton stuck his head inside the take-out window. “We don’t have time for you to play with them all,” he whispered.

Virgil sighed and handed Milton the remaining jars.

“I don’t see how this is any different,” Virgil argued. “They’re still souls.”

“Souls of
Make-Believe Play-fellows,”
Milton countered. “They were never really alive, so they never really died. Would you rather keep eating the souls of real people? Real
bad
people, judging from how dark and angry the blobs are? After all, you are what you—”

“Fine, fine,” Virgil grumbled as he deposited the last
of the imaginary-friend souls in the pile. “It just seems so …
mean.”

Virgil crept out of the shed and, being a decent sort of boy, closed the door behind him. The action set a precarious pile of jars trembling. Milton held his breath as the pyramid of six hastily stacked jars wobbled. The imaginary soul on top drifted from one side of the jar to the other, counteracting the stack’s listing teeter. Milton sighed with relief. Unfortunately, the soul slurped back in its sea of ectoplasmic goo, and the jars toppled with a chorus of dull thuds.

Hambone Hank rustled awake.

“Woof happened?” he yelped groggily.

Milton ducked down and swaddled the Lost Soul jars while hobbling toward his metal waste bin.

“Move!” Milton hissed to Virgil, and the two of them barreled down the corridor.

“It’s official,” Dr. Kellogg chirped as he gestured for Hugo to step off the scale. “You boys are a bunch of losers … in the best possible way!”

Milton and Virgil exchanged conspiratorial smirks.

The effect had been practically instantaneous, Milton thought. After a breakfast of Hambone Hank’s new recipe and their morning session in the DREADmills, all of the boys had indeed lost a few pounds. It wasn’t a
lot—which was probably good in terms of not raising suspicions—but it
did
mean that the boys might avoid an eternity spent running with the devil down in h-e-double-hockey-sticks.

Nurse Rutlidge strutted out across the Gymnauseum floor. She leaned in close to Dr. Kellogg with a face crinkled with worry, whispering in his ear with her thin, dull red lips. His bushy white eyebrows rose with surprise.

“Of course,” he muttered to the nurse. The doctor cleared his throat.

“Boys, I will be back in two shakes of a skinless, boiled lamb shank.”

The spry man walked out of the Gymnauseum with nervous, purposeful little steps.

The boys shrugged their shoulders, drained from their time in the DREADmills, yet even more sluggish than usual. Perhaps it had something to with the sudden change in diet. Hugo in particular had complained that Hambone Hank’s soul food tasted kind of weird. But it was probably like that chalky soy milk Milton’s mom had bought after reading an article on bovine growth hormones: it tasted strange at first, but Milton—perhaps out of necessity—had eventually gotten used to it.

Dr. Kellogg returned, each foot tapping the floor like a tiny hammer.

“Gym dandy!” he said, his smile as genuinely warm as a video of a roaring fire. “I have some good news and
some less-good news! The good news is that the vice principals are very pleased with your recent, if modest, downward trend in mass.”

Milton raised his great, ugly hand.

Dr. Kellogg waved Milton’s question away. “The scales are wired directly to their hovering offices above, Mr. Grumby,” the teacher said testily.

Milton lowered his hand sheepishly, the doctor having perfectly anticipated his question.

“Now that you have all proved that Blimpo’s patented system of dynamic, stress-induced movement really
works,”
Dr. Kellogg continued with a mad gleam in his eye, “the vice principals want to take it to the next level. From now on, we will be instituting a new policy of twenty-four-hour fitness.”

The boys emerged from their stupor, muttering complaints.

“What does
that
mean?” Hugo asked with a deep scowl.

The diminutive doctor swelled up with indignation.

“What it means, you impertinent young man, is that you will all be working out in the DREADmills in shifts, sixteen hours a day.”

Gene looked from face to face, lost. “Was that the less-good news?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Thaddeus grumbled. “The lessest good news of all!”

“Least,”
Milton corrected out of habit.

The boys glared at Milton, as if they couldn’t like him any less, though they were about to.

“Boys, boys,” the doctor clucked. “Children should be seen and not heard.”

He ogled Milton with dull horror.

“And some shouldn’t even be
seen.”

The bell rang. The boys lumbered, heads slumped down like overburdened pack animals, into the locker rooms. They slammed their bulk down on the benches and sulked.

“This is like a vacuum cleaner with Energizer batteries,” Hugo griped. “It just keeps sucking and sucking and sucking….”

Thaddeus kicked his locker with frustration. In the locker next to his—Virgil’s—several soul jars crashed.

“What was that?” Thaddeus asked suspiciously.

Virgil blushed
hard
. His head snapped toward Milton, who knew in that instant that all manner of beans were about to be spilled.